“O” What a Waste

A question has been troubling me of late. “Why do we need the ZERO in phone numbers?”

In the UK all mobile numbers begin with prefix “0”. Why do we need to input this? Isn’t it obvious from the context that we’re dialling another number? Isn’t it a total waste of finger movement? Can’t we do away with learning and knowing this one digit? Or rather this non-digit?

If you browse the web you don’t have to type in “http://www.” you can happily type in the domain alone e.g. “wikipedia.org”. So why this waste? Why this irrelevance? Is this the echo of phaticcommunication that underscores the mass waste of our Age of Irresponsibility?

Think of all the walls of Yellow Pages the world over and the tonnes of ink we could have saved if we had stopped using the ZERO. Think of the information/data storage area saved by doing away with this vestigial feature, something that perhaps once had utility, but now ends in futility. And think of the sheer time we would have saved if we didn’t have to add that ZERO each time. A microsecond multiplied over and over becomes aeons in no time at all…

So let’s rid ourselves of this encumbrance and become leaner and lighter. I think the world needs it.